Tim O'Brien is the author of eight works of fiction, including Going After Cacciato, which received the National Book Award in fiction, The Things They Carried, which received France's Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and In the Lake of the Woods, which received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was named best novel of the year by Time magazine. His most recent novel is July, July (2003, Penguin).

O'Brien's short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines including Esquire, Harper's, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, and in several editions of The Best American Short Stories and The O. Henry Prize Stories. His short story "The Things They Carried" received the National Magazine Award in 1987 and in 1999 was selected for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike.

He has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently holds a chair in creative writing at Southwest Texas State University.